Counterfeiting of integrated circuits (ICs) is an increasing problem that can impact the safety and security of many systems. One solution to the issue of counterfeiting is to use a Physically Unclonable Function (PUF) to authenticate the manufacturing origin of an IC. Arbiter based PUFs are a unique type of PUF. However, arbiter based PUFs are susceptible to temperature and supply variation as well as machine learning attacks.
A silicon based PUF effectively provides a fingerprint for each individual die created, based on tiny manufacturing variations that not even the original manufacturer can duplicate. This fingerprint can be used as a replacement for non-volatile memory (NVM) to perform die-level traceability (DLT) in manufacturing, to improve process yields, and for defect tracking. The PUF can be used as a method for insuring supply chain integrity by allowing end of line manufacturers to query the fingerprint, (e.g., by issuing a “challenge” input), and check the “response” against a secure database stored at the silicon manufacturer's site. A set of Challenge-Response-Pairs (CRPs) are stored in the secure database to uniquely identify each component.